WSV’s Aundrea Sayrie writes about Aviator Elizabeth “Bessie” Coleman, the first Black female pilot in U.S. History.
History
On this day in 1606, in Westminster Hall, eight men stood trial for their participation in the Gunpowder Plot. These men, and a number of other religious extremists, sought to blow up Parliament, kill King James I, Queen Anne, and Prince Charles, and place 9-year-old Princess Elizabeth on the throne in an attempt to gain support and undo laws that all but outlawed Roman Catholicism in the country.
Three Rivers functions in much the same way that it has for years. People still work in specific places that everyone knows about. The town’s citizens shop in stores and visit businesses where they are as likely as not to see someone they know. They take part in social and civic activities and groups, some of which have been around for quite a while. Whether we are aware of it or not, life in Three Rivers centers on its factories, which have changed a lot over time, but which have set many of the same economic and social patterns for generations.
If you live in Three Rivers, you know that certain things in town never stop. The hum of the factories. The streetlights. Cars moving about town. Over and over, every day, they have been present, nonstop, for generations. They are a reminder that the people who live here are up to important things, contributing to the world and keeping life here humming along.
“Studying the past can be a tricky thing. We can quantify data, put events on a timeline, and use any number of tools to see how the world we live in today has unfolded, to see how different events impacted one another, to look for patterns, and to use the lessons therein to make decisions about the future. However, in everyday life, while we may look at past events in passing, we rarely consider them methodically.”